Dr. Taneja on MRI for Prostate Cancer Detection

Samir Taneja, MD, professor of Urology and Radiology and director of the Division of Urologic Oncology at NYU Langone Medical Center.

Over detection is a significant problem in prostate cancer, says Taneja. The standard detection-method has typically been a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, and, if abnormal, to a prostate biopsy. Cancers that are slow growing are often found this way, which can result in treating and generating secondary side effects inpatients that wouldn’t have died had their disease remained undetected.

An MRI offers a more targeted detection method done in several sequences. Using those sequences together increases the accuracy of the MRI and reduces the number of false positives.